Your Home

Australian climate zones

The eight climate zones used in Your Home are defined by the Building Code of Australia (BCA). Each climate zone has distinctly different design and construction requirements. Within each main zone are many regional sub-zones determined by local geographic features including wind patterns and height above sea level. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) identifies 69 of these sub-zones, which the BCA addresses and which can be called up by postcode.

Text description of the climate zones

Zone 1: northern Australia from Exmouth in WA across to midway between Townsville and Mackay in Queensland.

Zone 2: Coastal Queensland from midway between Townsville and Mackay south to just below Coffs Harbour.

Zone 3: northern central Australia from Carnarvon on the WA coast, encompassing Newman, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Longreach, Charleville to the Queensland hinterland down to 28 degrees south but not the coast.

Zone 5: coastal strip of WA from 27 to 34 degrees south encompassing Geraldton, Perth, Bunbury, then a coastal strip encompassing Esperance, a coastal strip encompassing Eucla, then coastal areas of SA encompassing Ceduna and Adelaide and some hinterland areas north of Whyalla and east of Adelaide, then a coastal strip of NSW encompassing Wollongong, Sydney, Newcastle up to 32 degrees south, then a hinterland strip west of Brisbane.

Zone 6: a coastal and hinterland strip of southern WA encompassing Albany, then hinterland north of Adelaide, coastal and hinterland area from Kangaroo Island and Adelaide around coastal and hinterland Victoria encompassing Ballarat and Melbourne, then the coastal strip of southern NSW and hinterland NSW west of Sydney as far north as 28 degrees south.

Zone 7: sub-alpine areas of Victoria and southern NSW including the south-eastern coast of Victoria and a small area west of Coffs Harbour, most of Tasmania and Bass Strait islands.